Despite advances in health and safety requirements for residential buildings, for office buildings and for other multi-story facilities, one of the leading causes of health and safety hazard in the event of fire continues to be smoke inhalation. Lack of oxygen and the presence of noxious fumes caused by fire are additional hazards that threaten the health and lives of those trapped within burning buildings. A variety of inventions have been devised to attempt to ameliorate the hazards of smoke inhalation, the presence of combustible gases, noxious fumes and the like, but these inventions do not avail a low-cost, portable device that can be implemented simply and quickly to help get air to persons or animals trapped within a burning building.
For example, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,703,808 issued to O'Donnell, there is disclosed a smoke eliminator for removing smoke, heat and combustion gases from a burning structure. This device is comprised of a rigid tube having an adapter attached to one end and a fog nozzle attached to its other end. The adapter allows the device to be connected to a conventional fire hose at its base end. It is designed primarily for use by firefighters, with the intention that a firefighter insert the device into the window space of the burning building to aspirate smoke, heat and gases from the building while creating a fog curtain outside of the window to protect adjacent buildings or firefighters working outside of the burning building. This invention is not designed to get air to those trapped within the burning building.
Another invention, U.S. Pat. No. 4,380,187 issued to Wicks, is designed specifically for providing air to persons entrapped within a burning building. This invention teaches a method and system for utilizing existing water pipes to feed air to trapped occupants. An actuator connected to a number of fire sensors within the building actuates a source of pressurized air through existing hot and cold water pipes upon detecting a fire. This air jet stream blasts existing water through the pipes, then provides an atmosphere of air at slightly elevated pressure in a pre-determined room, such as a bathroom. The presumed effect of this system is to provide air to the trapped inhabitants and to exclude smoke by the air pressure differential. The problem with this system is that it presumes the protected room will be available to those trapped within the burning building. This may not always be the case. Furthermore, rooms such as bathrooms frequently are not constructed near the outside wall of multi-story, multi-unit buildings, thereby drawing trapped inhabitants away from building exteriors where fire rescue teams might be likely to access the trapped inhabitant more easily. Additionally, this system is costly and complicated to implement, requiring fire sensors and air pressure actuators to be installed before the system is operable.
Numerous other devices and systems attempt to address fire ventilation hazards by smoke evacuation systems, such as in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,178,581 issued to Del Monte ("Smoke Evacuation System"), 4,054,084 issued to Palmer ("Fire and Smoke Free System For High Rise Building Stairways"), 4,944,216 issued to McCutcher ("Building Emergency Exhaust Fan System") and 4,928,583 issued to Taylor et al. ("Air Flow System"), as well as Japanese Patent No. 2-143042 issued to Shinjiro Miyahara ("Fire-Preventative Smoke-Discharging Device"). However, these systems and devices again are designed to systematically remove smoke, heat and noxious fumes caused by fire within a burning building as opposed to feeding air to particular inhabitants trapped within a burning building.
One object of the present invention therefore is to provide a device for providing air to those trapped within a burning building.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a device for providing air to those trapped within a burning building which is easy to use and re-use and does not require costly construction or installation work to implement.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a device for providing air to those trapped within a burning building which is portable and capable of being carried to various locations within a building which is on fire to allow a variety of users, including human inhabitants, infants, animals, firefighters, etc., to access air from outside of the building where smoke inhalation otherwise would threaten the health and even life of the user trapped inside of the building.
Still another object of the present invention is to provide a system for providing air to those trapped within a burning building which is lightweight, easy to manufacture and easy to transport from location to location within a multi-story building and adaptable to a variety of window sill constructions for use as the base support for installing the system in an emergency.
Yet another object of the present invention is to provide a system for feeding air to those trapped within a burning building which puts the user in the position to be rescued more readily by firefighters or rescue team members.
Numerous other advantages and features of the invention will become readily apparent from the detailed description of the preferred and alternative embodiments of the invention, from the claims, and from the accompanying drawings, in which like numerals are employed to designate like parts throughout.